Generating a testable working hypothesis is the first step towards conducting original research. Such research may prove or disprove the proposed hypothesis. Case reports, case series, online surveys and other observational studies, clinical trials, and narrative reviews help to generate hypotheses. Observational and interventional studies help to test hypotheses. A good hypothesis is usually based on previous evidence-based reports.Hypotheses without evidence-based justification and a priori ideas are not received favourably by the scientific community. Original research to test a hypothesis should be carefully planned to ensure appropriate methodology and adequate statistical power. While hypotheses can challenge conventional thinking and may be controversial, they should not be destructive. A hypothesis should be tested by ethically sound experiments with meaningful ethical and clinical implications. The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has brought into sharp focus numerous hypotheses, some of which were proven (e.g. effectiveness of corticosteroids in those with hypoxia) while others were disproven (e.g. ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin).

No abstract available.
*Databases, Bibliographic ; Humans ; Internet ; MEDLINE ; PubMed

Unique identifiers of researchers and authors can help all stakeholders of scientific communications improve their workflows. There have been several attempts to establish professional networks of scholars and list their scholarly achievements on digital platforms. Some of these platforms such as Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge and PubMed are searched to pick relevant peer reviewers, assess authors' publication history or choose suitable candidates for research and academic projects. However, each of these hubs has its specific applications, limiting the universal use for permanent tagging of researcher profiles. The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) initiative, launched in 2012, is aimed at registering scholarly contributors and averting the persistent ambiguity of recorded author names. The ORCID registry is growing fast and integrating with other ID-generating platforms, thereby increasing the functionality of the integrated systems. ORCID identifiers are increasingly used for selecting peer reviewers and acknowledging various scholarly contributions (e.g., published articles, reviewer comments, conference presentations). The initiative offers unique opportunities for transparent disclosures of author contributions and competing interests and improving ethical standards of research, editing, and publishing.
Databases, Factual ; Peer Review, Research ; Registries ; *Research Personnel ; Social Networking

Currently available online profiling platforms offer various services for researchers and authors. Opening an individual account and filling it with scholarly contents increase visibility of research output and boost its impact. This article overviews some of the widely used and emerging profiling platforms, highlighting their tools for sharing scholarly items, crediting individuals, and facilitating networking. Global bibliographic databases and search platforms, such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar, are widely used for profiling authors with indexed publications. Scholarly networking websites, such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, provide indispensable services for researchers poorly visible elsewhere on the Internet. Several specialized platforms are designed to offer profiling along with their main functionalities, such as reference management and archiving. The Open Researcher and Contributor Identification (ORCID) project has offered a solution to the author name disambiguation. It has been integrated with numerous bibliographic databases, platforms, and manuscript submission systems to help research managers and journal editors select and credit the best reviewers, and other scholarly contributors. Individuals with verifiable reviewer and editorial accomplishments are also covered by Publons, which is an increasingly recognized service for publicizing and awarding reviewer comments. Currently available profiling formats have numerous advantages and some limitations. The advantages are related to their openness and chances of boosting the researcher impact. Some of the profiling websites are complementary to each other. The underutilization of various profiling websites and their inappropriate uses for promotion of ‘predatory’ journals are among reported limitations. A combined approach to the profiling systems is advocated in this article.
Awards and Prizes ; Bibliography as Topic ; Databases, Bibliographic ; Humans ; Information Storage and Retrieval ; Internet ; Research Personnel

This article overviews currently available options for rewarding peer reviewers. Rewards and incentives may help maintain the quality and integrity of scholarly publications. Publishers around the world implemented a variety of financial and nonfinancial mechanisms for incentivizing their best reviewers. None of these is proved effective on its own. A strategy of combined rewards and credits for the reviewers1 creative contributions seems a workable solution. Opening access to reviews and assigning publication credits to the best reviews is one of the latest achievements of digitization. Reviews, posted on academic networking platforms, such as Publons, add to the transparency of the whole system of peer review. Reviewer credits, properly counted and displayed on individual digital profiles, help distinguish the best contributors, invite them to review and offer responsible editorial posts.
*Communication ; Fee-for-Service Plans ; Humans ; *Peer Review, Research ; Periodicals as Topic ; Publishing ; *Reward ; Science

Plagiarism may take place in any scientific journals despite currently employed anti-plagiarism tools. The absence of widely acceptable definitions of research misconduct and reliance solely on similarity checks do not allow journal editors to prevent most complex cases of recycling of scientific information and wasteful, or ‘predatory,’ publishing. This article analyses Scopus-based publication activity and evidence on poor writing, lack of related training, emerging anti-plagiarism strategies, and new forms of massive wasting of resources by publishing largely recycled items, which evade the ‘red flags’ of similarity checks. In some non-Anglophone countries ‘copy-and-paste’ writing still plagues pre- and postgraduate education. Poor research management, absence of courses on publication ethics, and limited access to quality sources confound plagiarism as a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary phenomenon. Over the past decade, the advent of anti-plagiarism software checks has helped uncover elementary forms of textual recycling across journals. But such a tool alone proves inefficient for preventing complex forms of plagiarism. Recent mass retractions of plagiarized articles by reputable open-access journals point to critical deficiencies of current anti-plagiarism software that do not recognize manipulative paraphrasing and editing. Manipulative editing also finds its way to predatory journals, ignoring the adherence to publication ethics and accommodating nonsense plagiarized items. The evolving preventive strategies are increasingly relying on intelligent (semantic) digital technologies, comprehensively evaluating texts, keywords, graphics, and reference lists. It is the right time to enforce adherence to global editorial guidance and implement a comprehensive anti-plagiarism strategy by helping all stakeholders of scholarly communication.
Education* ; Ethics ; Information Storage and Retrieval ; Plagiarism* ; Publications ; Recycling ; Retraction of Publication as Topic ; Scientific Misconduct ; Writing

The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a single citation metric, which is widely employed for ranking journals and choosing target journals, but is also misused as the proxy of the quality of individual articles and academic achievements of authors. This article analyzes Scopus-based publication activity on the JIF and overviews some of the numerous misuses of the JIF, global initiatives to overcome the ‘obsession’ with impact factors, and emerging strategies to revise the concept of the scholarly impact. The growing number of articles on the JIF, most of which are in English, reflects interest of experts in journal editing and scientometrics toward its uses, misuses, and options to overcome related problems. Solely displaying values of the JIFs on the journal websites is criticized by experts as these average metrics do not reflect skewness of citation distribution of individual articles. Emerging strategies suggest to complement the JIFs with citation plots and alternative metrics, reflecting uses of individual articles in terms of downloads and distribution of related information through social media and networking platforms. It is also proposed to revise the original formula of the JIF calculation and embrace the concept of the impact and importance of individual articles. The latter is largely dependent on ethical soundness of the journal instructions, proper editing and structuring of articles, efforts to promote related information through social media, and endorsements of professional societies.
Complement System Proteins ; Editorial Policies ; Humans ; Journal Impact Factor* ; Periodicals as Topic ; Proxy ; Publications ; Social Media

The digitization and related developments in journal editing and publishing necessitate increasing the awareness of all stakeholders of science communication in the emerging global problems and possible solutions. Journal editors and publishers are frequently encountered with the fast-growing problems of authorship, conflicts of interest, peer review, research misconduct, unethical citations, and inappropriate journal impact metrics. While the number of erroneous and unethical research papers and wasteful, or 'predatory', journals is increasing exponentially, responsible editors are urged to 'clean' the literature by correcting or retracting related articles. Indexers are advised to implement measures for accepting truly influential and ethical journals and delisting sources with predatory publishing practices. Updating knowledge and skills of authors, editors and publishers, developing and endorsing recommendations of global editorial associations, and (re)drafting journal instructions can be viewed as potential tools for improving ethics of academic journals. The aim of this Statement is to increase awareness of all stakeholders of science communication of the emerging ethical issues in journal editing and publishing and initiate a campaign of upgrading and enforcing related journal instructions.
Authorship ; Editorial Policies ; Ethics* ; Peer Review, Research ; Periodicals as Topic ; Publications*

Citations to scholarly items are building bricks for multidisciplinary science communication. Citation analyses are currently influencing individual career advancement and ranking of academic and research institutions worldwide. This article overviews the involvement of scientific authors, reviewers, editors, publishers, indexers, and learned associations in the citing and referencing to preserve the integrity of science communication. Authors are responsible for thorough bibliographic searches to select relevant references for their articles, comprehend main points, and cite them in an ethical way. Reviewers and editors may perform additional searches and recommend missing essential references. Publishers, in turn, are in a position to instruct their authors over the citations and references, provide tools for validation of references, and open access to bibliographies. Publicly available reference lists bear important information about the novelty and relatedness of the scholarly items with the published literature. Few editorial associations have dealt with the issue of citations and properly managed references. As a prime example, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) issued in December 2014 an updated set of recommendations on the need for citing primary literature and avoiding unethical references, which are applicable to the global scientific community. With the exponential growth of literature and related references, it is critically important to define functions of all stakeholders of science communication in curbing the issue of irrational and unethical citations and thereby improve the quality and indexability of scholarly journals.
Authorship/standards ; *Bibliography as Topic ; *Editorial Policies ; Information Dissemination/ethics ; Peer Review, Research/ethics/*standards ; Periodicals as Topic/ethics/*standards ; Publishing/ethics/*standards ; Quality Control ; Science/ethics/standards ; Writing/*standards

Publishing scholarly articles in traditional and newly-launched journals is a responsible task, requiring diligence from authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers. The current generation of scientific authors has ample opportunities for publicizing their research. However, they have to selectively target journals and publish in compliance with the established norms of publishing ethics. Over the past few years, numerous illegitimate or predatory journals have emerged in most fields of science. By exploiting gold Open Access publishing, these journals paved the way for low-quality articles that threatened to change the landscape of evidence-based science. Authors, reviewers, editors, established publishers, and learned associations should be informed about predatory publishing practices and contribute to the trustworthiness of scholarly publications. In line with this, there have been several attempts to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate journals by blacklisting unethical journals (the Jeffrey Beall's list), issuing a statement on transparency and best publishing practices (the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association's and other global organizations' draft document), and tightening the indexing criteria by the Directory of Open Access Journals. None of these measures alone turned to be sufficient. All stakeholders of science communication should be aware of multiple facets of unethical practices and publish well-checked and evidence-based articles.
Communication ; Disclosure/*ethics ; *Ethics, Research ; Fraud/*ethics ; Information Dissemination/*ethics ; Medical Writing ; Periodicals as Topic/ethics ; Publishing/*ethics ; Science/*ethics